American startup Salsify chooses Lisbon for 1st European office

American startup Salsify, whose clients include Coca-Cola, chooses Lisbon to open its first European office, citing good weather and the city’s “entrepreneurial spirit” among its reasons.

We chose Lisbon as our first European office because of the entrepreneurial spirit and advanced skillset of every person we talked to.

Hailing from Boston, Massachusetts, Salsify sells a computer platform to customers such as L’Oreal, Coca-Cola, Mars, Bosch, that efficiently make their products available on ecommerce sites like Amazon.

To meet the needs of the growing list of global brands which use its platform, Salsify has opened its first international office in Lisbon, Portugal.

Jeremy Redburn

“Support of our brand manufacturer customers worldwide with top-level engineering and customer success teams was the driving force behind our expansion,” said Salsify Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of Product Jeremy Redburn in a statement.

“We chose Lisbon as our first European office because of the entrepreneurial spirit and advanced skillset of every person we talked to.

“As head of the Lisbon office, I am hyper-focused on recruiting a team that mirrors the talented, friendly culture we have grown in Boston. We are looking for creative professionals that never want to stop learning and are excited to gain a deep understanding of the Salsify platform, our customers’ specific needs, and how the future of commerce can drive their growth,” he added.

Salsify empowers brand manufacturers to accelerate digital growth by delivering the product experiences consumers demand anywhere they choose to shop online. The American startup’s platform combines the power of PIM and DAM capabilities, the industry’s broadest commerce ecosystem, and actionable insights to orchestrate compelling product experiences through every digital touchpoint.

Lisbon Chosen Over Dublin

In an interview with Observador, Redburn remarked that “Nobody [in Boston] thought that Portugal was going to be the answer,” adding, “everyone was thinking of Ireland, but the weather is shit.”

The big technology companies in Europe can be found in “London, Amsterdam, Zurich, Dublin or Barcelona,” and in other cities that were being planned for Salsify’s first seat in the European Union, according to the interview with Observador.

However, in the end, in addition to the “good weather,” the bet was on the “entrepreneurial spirit” and practical details, such as the fact that there was a “direct flight from Boston.”

The insistence of Unbabel Founder Vasco Pedro was very important in choosing Portugal.

For now, Salsify is still at the IDEIA Hub, in the Sotto Mayor Palace, an incubator in Lisbon, while looking for a bigger space to move in the next “four or five months.”

According to the co-founders, the insistence of Unbabel Founder Vasco Pedro was very important in choosing Portugal.

The growth of Salsify in its first European office will be dependent on the speed with which Salsify will hire “around 25 people” to integrate the company’s full-time team in Portugal in areas such as customer support, IT and human resources.

The need to open an office in the European Union means that Salsify wanted to have a physical space on European soil, in order to personally receive companies that already use the platform in Europe.

However, they also want to attract other European companies to make use of the service they provide and this is easier with a physical presence on the continent.

The world’s biggest brands including Coca-Cola, Bosch, GSK, Rawlings, and Fruit of the Loom use Salsify every day to stand out on the digital shelf. To date, Salsify has raised a total of $98.1 million in funding, led by Greenspring Associates, Underscore VC, Venrock, Matrix Partners and North Bridge.

In addition to establishing its European presence, the company used its recent sales growth to fuel research and development (R&D), with over 40 percent of its revenue being re-invested in R&D in 2018. In March, the company delivered the first Product Experience Management (PXM) platform which included closed-loop analytics to help brands continuously optimize product merchandising on the digital shelf to drive sales.

Tim Hinchliffe is the editor in chief at Portugal Startups. Previously he was an editor at Colombia Reports in South America and a reporter for The Ghanaian Chronicle in West Africa. He covers all tech and startup related news. Principal at Espacio.